- Country of Origin: Hawaii, USA.
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My mother always told me that I was her sunshine. Not only is this because my name is Summer, but also because I was the only daughter in the family and was thus treated like a princess. I was told I would do great things in life and to always follow my dreams, so I grew up having many ambitions. I wanted to be a princess like many of the other girls in preschool. In elementary school, I wanted to be a teacher and an FBI agent. When I got to middle school, I wanted to be a therapist. Finally, in my high school years, I decided I wanted to be a profiler. This decision wasn’t just influenced by the many, many TV series of cop shows like Forensic Files, Law and Order, or NCIS, but also because of my brother.
To explain what I mean, I must start from the very beginning. As a single mother, my mom was always working. She started her day at 3 am and ended it by 6 pm, taking a total of three different buses in order to take her kids to and from school at the same time. To me and my second oldest brother (Zach), our oldest brother (Josh) was like our father. My mom was too poor to afford babysitters, so that’s what Josh became.
In a way, Josh had given up his childhood for us.
I think that’s why he changed; because of the responsibilities bestowed upon him from such an early age. Not only was he essentially a father to kids who weren’t his, it meant having to solely raise us right while Mom worked.
With all that responsibility and pressure, he constantly struggled with his mental health. Some days, I would catch him looking out of our nine-story building – which we were lucky enough to have – to a backyard beach. In those moments, time seemed to stand still. Moments like that were ever fleeting though when you are surrounded by kids who constantly bicker.
Introductions
One day, Josh brought home a girl. Now, my brother wasn’t one to date very often, nor did he usually bring girls over. With a mom who constantly had an opinion about every little thing we did, it’s not a surprise that none of us ever brought anyone home. Although we ultimately knew it was because she was just looking out for us, it was the way she did it that bugged us. She always started with this smug look, a look that always threw everyone off.
This first girl Josh brought over was very soft-spoken, nice, and had much in common with him. I would even go so far as to say they were practically the same person. She was the type of person who just clicks perfectly at the first meeting when you’re young, and you idolize them as the coolest person ever.
She stayed in our lives until I was about 11 years old.
There were times in their relationship when she and my brother would “take breaks,” but they would always end up back together. In hindsight, this possibly could have played a part in my own future commitment issues. Seeing those breaks made me realize the hardships of being in a serious relationship, a relationship – platonic or otherwise – that I thought I would never find myself in.
The different faces we hide
As time went on, things began to change.
Do you remember being younger and having everything hidden from you, whether out of necessity or compassion? More of those lies began to appear in our family from this point on, ones kept specifically from me so as not to dim my sunshine.
Looking back, I can see what a good liar my brother was; how easy it was for him to hide his millions of emotions behind the biggest smile in the world.
Don’t get me wrong, he still absolutely refused to smile in pictures. When he did, though, it would light up the entire room. When I did eventually recognize the mask he wore, it was a real eye-opener. This man, the one who raised me and who had become a saint in my eyes, had been facing his demons the whole time.
My brother has had his fair share of this cruel world since he was just a kid, including going through my mom’s many mistakes for lovers, and his dad, who could barely get himself together for his son.
No one is perfect, including my family and I, and living in Waianae certainly didn’t make things any better. We grew up having little money and only one income to support the four of us; That’s barely enough to live on in Hawaii.It made it easier to be drawn to things you never thought you would have the means to do.
You’ve probably heard a lot of times that smoking cigarettes or vapes are “gateway drugs.” Well, it was that previously-mentioned sweet girl who introduced my brother to these drugs. Addiction ran in my family and in Josh’s too, and this made the difference between this girl and my brother ever more apparent; she was able to stop when she wanted to. When she finally left for good, he refused to get clean. After all, when you have addiction problems, there is a lot you’ll do before you stop.
The spiral of addiction
Years went by as his addiction grew more intense until he finally couldn’t hide it from us any longer. By that point, we had moved in next door to the soon-to-be “chronics” – a fancy way of saying drug addicts in Hawaii – who only worsened it.
I couldn’t believe just how different my brother was becoming. I never imagined I would ever feel the need to leave a room or hide when he entered. Soon, I was even terrified to be home or around anyone at all. It was like watching a perfect flower blossom only to wither, just to see him deteriorate and lose his mind.
People say home is where the heart is, a saying that was becoming less and less true for me, because home was a place I was starting to despise. For one thing, it was the place where I had to be constantly on guard because of my brother’s new and questionable friends. One time I was even woken up by one of them sneaking in through my window!
One incident that stands out
It was late one night. I had just finished showering in the girls’ bathroom in my mom’s room and was heading down the hallway towards my room. Right in the middle of that hall was the boys’ bathroom.
Trying to be as quiet as I could – because Josh was in the boys’ bathroom – I sneaked to my room and made it safely through the hallway when I heard him finally exit the bathroom.
It was rare for my brother to ever yell at me.I was so scared of my brother’s anger that I did my best to avoid his bad side, and as a result, he completely spoiled me. I never got yelled at because I was smart enough not to push his buttons.
But my brother was different now. He no longer had sympathy for anyone, swearing they all hated him and were constantly talking behind his back. He would sometimes even tell me he could hear voices in the walls speaking to him, voices that revealed what we would say when he was gone.
This time was no different. Accusing me of speaking about him behind his back, he started screaming so loud that it woke my mother. She immediately rushed out of her room half-awake to see me cornered near the closet. My eyes were full of tears as I looked at her, pleading for help. She quickly swooped in to defend me.
That was my mom’s last straw. Soon after, she finally kicked Josh out, which was probably the hardest thing my mother ever had to do. She is a strong lady with her own share of trauma that made her empathy never-ending. In her eyes, no one deserved to be pushed away like that until absolutely necessary.
My struggle to understand
For the longest time, I never really understood why my mom put up with Josh for so long or even why my brother had switched so drastically. It made me question their actions. Why only then were they unable to control themselves?
I decided to look for an escape and turned to the shows I loved best: True Crime TV. I came upon this one show called N.C.I.S., a show that constantly relied on a profiler. A lot of shows I watched had profilers on them, but it wasn’t until I realized that I wanted to understand people better that I really started to notice them. In N.C.I.S., the profiler could read people like the back of her hand.
You’re probably thinking that shows like that aren’t completely accurate and, trust me, I know. But it was the fact that she understood everything that really caught my attention. It was a way for me to finally understand my brother’s reasons as to why he turned to drugs, and the reason my mom had so much empathy for people who deserved so much less. If it had not been for my brother and mother showing me such a change and putting me through those experiences, I probably would have been an entirely different person. A teacher, perhaps, or maybe even a princess.
Thank you to Julianna Wages on the Lifestyle & Relationships team for her inspired edits on this piece.
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Summer Jade Lindsey-Villarreal
Summer Lindsey-Villarreal was born in Texas and has been raised in Hawaii since she was two years old. She currently attends the University of Hawaii-West Oahu and is in the process of becoming a profiler. When she’s not busy with school, she works at The Beach House by 604 part-time. Her hobbies include drawing, basketball, volleyball, and listening to some good jams.
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